Racist chants at West Ham investigated by police

West Ham United's season took a turn from the shambolic to the shameful on Sunday when large groups of supporters were filmed chanting racist and anti-semitic slogans at half-time of the club's 4-3 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur. The Metropolitan Police confirmed that its football unit is investigating a complaint made by the Community Security Trust, an organisation that protects Britain's Jewish community from anti-semitism. Among the chants heard was one stating: "I'd rather be a Paki than a Jew".

Clips of the chants had been posted on the YouTube website by a member going by the username of "cockneymatt88". The trust noted that the number in the username might have been a neo-Nazi reference, the 88 being the eighth letter of the alphabet twice over, standing for "Heil Hitler".

Though the username took down the clips at about 5pm yesterday the Football Association had already forwarded the video to police. The FA will request that West Ham provide all available CCTV footage to investigators, and will push for prosecutions and for football banning orders to be imposed on guilty parties.

There had been a storm of protest from Tottenham fans to their club, who in turn lodged a formal protest with West Ham. "We have contacted West Ham and they are conducting an investigation," said Tottenham, "we are awaiting the outcome of that." West Ham distanced themselves from the actions of a section of their supporters while pointing to their own anti-racist credentials. "West Ham is a leading [anti-racist] campaigner and will not tolerate racist behaviour of any kind," said the club. "We will investigate this matter fully, attempt to identify the perpetrators and take the appropriate action."

The FA's head of stadia, Chris Whalley, will write to the relegation-threatened club today to demand an explanation for the security and stewarding provisions it has in place. The FA will want to know why there was no intervention from stewards to put a stop to the chanting, which took place at half-time when the home side were leading Spurs 2-0.

Piara Powar, director of the Kick It Out anti-racism campaign, said: "There are very, very clear guidelines given to stewards; there is a section on the training programme about how to deal with this sort of incident.

"Either these guys have not been trained in the right way or they have ignored their training and were too frightened to intervene. This had the classic ingredients: a passionate match, a relegation-threatened club against one known as a Jewish club. It's a throwback and it shows we can't be complacent."

Guardian